The diversity of family forms is the trend in the early childhood field. The traditional families are still the majority in the school community, but many other nontraditional families become more visible in this community too. Those non-traditional families are like same-sex parents, single parent, and many other forms. That is a new trend that we all need to adapt ourselves to it, and help our children and their families to be open-minded to it.
To those who believe that early childhood centers should avoid the inclusion of books depicting gay or lesbian individuals such as same-sex partnered families, I would like to say no to them. Books are considered to be one of the most visual and vivid way for children to get the information and transform what they learn or see from the book to reality. They can make the connection between the content in the books and the reality. In reality, there are children from the families who have two moms or two dads. If children read about it from the books through lovely stories, they will be open to the discussion later on in the class and be more respectful to the families like that. As inclusiveness is the core of many early childhood centers, including the diverse families should be the first step that the centers take. Books, and posters can be the appropriate and direct resources for children to explore and understand diversity in the world.
I believe there are traditional families who do not want their children to be interacted with children or educators from non-traditional families. To those parents, the first thing I would like to address to them is the school that their children are at is encouraging inclusiveness and diversity. That is one of the goals in our school’s curriculum. Besides that I would like to ask why they are against the interaction between their children and children from non-traditional families, as it stated in the video (that one of the most helpful ways to respond to biased comments is to ask why they think that (Laureate Education, Inc.,2010). Only if we find out the problem, we can solve it collaboratively.
Anti-bias curriculum and practices at school is a long term process, children at the young age are easily influenced by the stereotypes and biases that they sense and are told from the society or from the families. That is an influence that children will bring back to school when they are interacting with their friends and teachers. In that case, anti-bias curriculum should be implemented with diversity and the inclusion of families participation as well. Only the school and the families have the agreement to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusiveness, children will have a clear picture and model to follow. They will know what the expectations are.
References
Course Media: "Start Seeing Diversity: Gender"
Course Media: "Start Seeing Diversity: Sexual Orientation"
